MachinesA figure in a black spacesuit walks solidly along a corridor. Doors open along its path automatically. No sound is heard. It enters the chamber.

The chamber is a great hall, like a ballroom. It is white. The carved ceiling is way up high. The floor is marble. Spacesuit figure is dwarfed by the enormity and vastness of the hall. An ancient upon ancient waltz is being played. Spacesuit figure approaches a stage at one end of the hall. Spacesuit figure climbs ten steep steps. It feels a little dizzy.

Someone is on a balcony, beyond where spacesuit figure can see. She is dressed in Victorian lace. She waves a feathered fan and drops it over the balcony. The fan floats noiselessly down. The woman on the balcony retreats.

Spacesuit figure stands before the red stage curtains. It pauses. It seems to be thinking "Shall I?".

It has decided 'yes'. It goes through...

On the other side of the curtain, the figure removed its helmet. It saw itself reflected in the glass/metal curved doors of the pod. The pod looked back and saw a woman in a spacesuit with helmet removed. Her skin was coffee-brown with freckles, almost black, across her nose. A glimpse of white teeth. Dark eyes. Long, curled hair, matted with sweat. It recognised her. Telepathically it enquired how she was.

She generated the sense of wellbeing that was the standard reply. Also something that, if verbalised, might say "I have just come from battle. We won. But I still want to fight.". Pods need this kind of information. She went up to the doors and they opened. She stepped inside.

Until activated, the pod's interior was just a small, cylindrical room with a carpet and a metal wall. She unzipped the spacesuit. One freckled shoulder then another was bared in the breeze of the pod's ventilation. Then the rest of her body, sweat-soaked.

There was a choice. She could program exactly the events she wanted, randomise chosen tactics or leave it up to the pod. Usually she played safe and made up her own choice with some random elements. Today she was brave. She let the pod decide. She figured it knew her well enough. So, when the keyboard emerged from the wall, she pushed it back untouched.

"Fate" she whispered as the lights went out.

She felt herself in the hold of machine arms. Crudely and clumsily, they lifted her and suspended her high above the ground. The pod could simulate the gentlest human touch, but that would have left her cold. Metal it was.

She could see two metal ladders sliding out from the walls below her. They formed a V-shape. Some more came out so the V was now an X. "My crucifix" she thought.

The machine arms held her face and belly down and lowered her at the same time as they raised the metal cross. The ladders touched her skin. One beam for each arm and leg. Her face hung down towards the floor. As the cold metal bit into her, she felt exposed and trembly. Her sex became wet from just lying there. Another, identical cross came down across her back. She became trapped between the two.

Unable to move, she could not shake off the razors that had come down from nowhere and now cut her back. She became a little afraid. But she knew you could trust the pod. It would cut her skin, not slice her flesh. The razors did not cut deeply. They merely skimmed her back.

The crucifix swerved and tilted noiselessly till she was held upright. The darkness was replaced by a thousand whizzing colours all over the walls around her. Above, a tunnel of colours leading to black, below, the same. The crucifix flipped forward through 180 degrees. She was upside down. Then the same backwards, forwards, forwards, back... which way up was she? She felt that she was lying flat along the inside of the cylinder. But on her back or front? The crucifix did not move again. She rested for a second.

Something invisible pulled her hair so that her head was held taut. Someting constricted around her neck. She squeezed her eyes shut against the blinding, pulsating colours. Something was reaching between her legs. What was probably a dildo entered her anus. Nothing touched her vagina. It pouted and trembled and wpt mucus, redundant. The dildo in her anus was thick; she felt full.

Something took her wrists. Something else filled her mouth. It was hard to breathe. The dildo began to move inside her arse.

Something was slapping her tits. Her vagina ached to be touched but no hands went near.

"Damn you" she thought.

She heard the sound of a drill and curiosity forced her unwilling eyes open. Coming out from the wall, from an orange sea alive with bubbles that floated up and down and across there was a thin, leather pole. It was red. It was vibrating at immense speed.

It sought her clitoris with precision and hovered a millimetre away from it. The other end of the pole snaked around, and, also vibrating, hovered at the entrance to her vagina. Then both ends attacked.

She would have shrieked had she been able. She began to feel that she would orgasm. Then something came and pinched her nostrils so that, with her mouth full, she could not take in a breath.

She shuddered against the crucifix cage as she came.

Suddenly. She could breathe. The lights went out. The crucifixes retracted into the wall and she was falling at one hundred miles an hour down, down in the dark. She screamed all the way down; expected to be dashed to death when she hit the ground.

Instead... well, she did not remember hitting the ground. Only that in an instant she was sitting on the soft carpet of the pod, the lights were on and the door was opening.